2022, screenprint on Stonehenge

57 cm x 38 cm

Photo: Carl Warner

In nothingeverything (t) meaning is decentred, as I focus on the material form of a sole letter and the literality of language. Stripped of all common context, a single letter ‘t’ of the English alphabet floats across the expanse of the white page, void of aim or sequence. Repetition alienates the character from its usual associations using the serial reproduction of screen printing. Order is implied, yet coherence is denied as the structured composition drifts away off the picture plane.

I ask the viewer to see and listen to each form. Using a single hand drawn silkscreen stencil, the printing process becomes a method to contemplate the letter form itself. The physical act of writing is divorced from any legible connotations or implications, eliminating the sole purpose of the alphabet: to construct meaning.

Stella Haycock is a Meanjin-based contemporary artist, exploring the limits and deconstruction of the English language through printmaking and papermaking. Her practice interrogates the conventions and expectations of language in its written form and repurposes alphabetic characters to find new ways of seeing and understanding. Using the layering of handmade paper and abstracted typographic forms, Haycock’s practice breaks down the process of constructing meaning, actions paralleled in the methodical slowing down of the silkscreen process.